Glenn Beck, Joe Scarborough tout a Ron Paul third party run against Gingrich, Obama

Some conservative commentators are laying the groundwork for backing Texas congressman Ron Paul as a third party candidate if the Republicans nominate Newt Gingrich to face Democratic President Barack Obama. Even as many on the right warm to the liberty-loving lawmaker, more of the mainstream media is beginning to consider him a factor in the GOP primary battle already underway.

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and longtime Gingrich critic, today spoke favorably about a possible Paul general election candidacy as a reaction to “big government” conservative Gingrich. The co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program invoked the words of conservative radio show host Glenn Beck in welcoming a potential Paul insurgency in the 2012 general election.

“Yesterday, Glenn Beck said something that I guarantee you a lot of small-government conservatives, like me, have thought. And that is, if I have to choose between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich, a guy that George Will said would have been a ‘marvelous Marxist’ and who is the opposite of being a small-government conservative — if Ron Paul’s running as a third-party candidate, I’m going to give him a long look. Because I can’t vote for the two guys who worship at the altar of big government in their own separate ways. And that’s the problem with a Newt Gingrich candidacy. He’s not a small government conservative.”

Scarborough sees Paul, the Republican congressman from Lake Jackson, as a potential factor in a 2012 race — should he choose to run.

“Ron Paul, with Newt Gingrich out there, would get 5, 10, 15 percent,” Scarborough said today, “and that would re-elect Barack Obama.”

Paul, who was the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 1988 against George H.W Bush and Michael Dukakis, has said repeatedly that he has no plans currently to run as a third-party candidate. But he has been withering in his criticism of Gingrich, accusing the former House speaker of “serial hypocrisy.”

The Wall Street Journal doesn’t think that Paul needs to wait until next fall to have an impact on the 2012 presidential race. Here are brief excerpts from today’s Journal report from Iowa:

“Ron Paul is the wild card in the Republican presidential deck—and that makes him one of the most important cards of all right now.

“It was possible earlier this year to write off the libertarian Texas congressman as an eccentric simply looking, as he did four years ago, for a place on a debate stage to proclaim his gospel of small government and hard money. But now Mr. Paul appears to be the man who could shape the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, which could go a long way toward shaping the overall race.

“Ron Paul is the wild card in the Republican presidential deck and could be the man who alters the outcome of the crucial initial caucuses in Iowa, and, as a result, helps shape the broader race that follows… A strong Paul performance in Iowa would go a long way toward determining not just the outcome of the Jan. 3 caucuses there, but the path of the crucial phase of the race that immediately follows Iowa.”